Hungary Looks For Holocaust Heroes

2 October 2004 -- A Hungarian museum has launched a search for people who helped save the lives of Hungarian Jews during World War II when some 550,000 Hungarian Jews and Roma were killed by the Nazis.

Maria Schmidt, the director of the House of Terror Museum, said yesterday that Hungarian society failed to recognize those who risked their lives helping Jews escape persecution and worse.

Schmidt called on those who know people who helped Hungarian Jews hide or escape to contact the museum.

Since 1989, the Yad Vashem Institute, Israel's Holocaust memorial, has awarded the Medal of the Righteous to some 600 non-Jewish Hungarians who helped save Jews during World War II.

(AP/Reuters)